


something good can work

by taizi



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 18:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13324362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Noctis is still laughing when Ignis reaches their table, and tilts a crooked grin up at his advisor, all soft edges and brightness despite the tired shadows under his eyes. Ignis can’t help but smile back, can’t help the curl of warm fondness that fills his chest as he turns to greet Prompto in turn.Prompto looks surprised by the hello but it only takes him a moment to recover. “Hey, Iggy,” he says, pink-faced and pleased.





	something good can work

 

The prince’s friend comes to dinner with a torn lip and bruised knuckles. Ignis doesn’t have a chance to decide how he feels about that before Noctis is throwing his controller aside and rounding the coffee table like a hungry coeurl is hot on his heels.

“What _happened_?” he demands with such dismay that Ignis is at once assured that Prompto doesn’t make a habit of showing up looking fresh from a fight. “Are you okay?”

“For sure, dude,” the blond says easily, waving the worry away. “I just, you know. Fell or whatever.”

Noctis isn’t an idiot. Ignis knows that Prompto knows that. It’s glaringly obvious just by looking that those marks have intention behind them. They aren’t the accidental scrapes and bumps of a fall.

But some kind of unspoken understanding passes between the two boys in the next moment, and then Noctis is grudgingly dragging Prompto back to the sofa and starting a new game, and the subject is summarily dismissed.

Ignis swallows back that worried voice in the quiet of his mind and doesn’t wonder.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t that Ignis _disapproves_ of Prompto. The boy is hardly inconvenient to have around, and in no way unpleasant company. He heckles Noctis into studying and helps clear the table after meals, and excuses himself the moment he thinks he might be in the way.

There have been people who weren’t so earnest and good-natured. People Ignis and Gladio have cut off and shut out before they could get close enough to the prince to hurt him. But Prompto has never asked anything of Noctis but his company, and is understanding when royal duties get in the way of even that, and looks as though he’s lucky just to be around someone who treats him kindly.

Ignis doesn’t _disapprove,_  but he does worry, sometimes, that Noctis is getting too close; leaving his heart open, setting himself up for a hurt that he’s no longer young enough for his retainers to spare him from.

“It’s my _turn,_ ” Prompto is insisting stubbornly when Ignis steps into the Crow’s Nest to pick up his wayward prince, his voice carrying easily in the otherwise empty dining room. He and Noctis are squabbling over the check holder, and finally Prompto plants his hand in the prince’s face and _shoves,_ sliding the booklet and his ATM card at their amused-looking waiter. Then he squawks and yanks his hand away, demands, “Did you just _lick_ me?”

Noctis is still laughing when Ignis reaches their table, and tilts a crooked grin up at his advisor, all soft edges and brightness despite the tired shadows under his eyes. Ignis can’t help but smile back, can’t help the curl of warm fondness that fills his chest as he turns to greet Prompto in turn.

Prompto looks surprised by the hello but it only takes him a moment to recover. “Hey, Iggy,” he says, pink-faced and pleased.

 

* * *

 

“You can drop me off here,” Prompto says, unbuckling his seatbelt.

Ignis idles by the curb agreeably, but he can’t help frowning at him in the rearview mirror. Similarly, Noctis says, “We’re, like, two blocks from your apartment.”

“That’s okay!”

“Prom, it’s raining.”

Prompto darts a reluctant look at Ignis, drags his eyes back to Noctis, wrings the strap of his bookbag between his hands nervously. It takes him a minute to come up with a polite way of saying their car is a little too nice for his neighborhood, and might attract the wrong kind of attention, and by then Ignis is kicking himself for needing that much spelled out so plainly.

“Um, but thanks for the ride,” Prompto adds lamely.

He’s red-faced as he pops his door open and disappears into the gray sheets of rain, and Noctis is quiet the rest of the way home.

 

* * *

 

Prompto is, largely, sunny and silly and stubborn. Ignis has never seen him mulish or sullen.

He’s unable to get a straight answer out of the battered boy, and there’s nothing for it but to leave him to the prince’s tender care instead. Stepping into the hall and closing the bedroom door on Noctis’ loud tirade, as it swells to new levels of annoyed and concerned, Ignis turns to Gladio.

“You should see the other guy,” the shield says, a hint of wry humor in his voice. “Had six inches on Prom, and twice the weight. It was like watching a puppy square up against a garula.”

Ignis rubs the bridge of his nose. Prompto is _smarter_ than that. “Do you have any idea _why_?”

Gladio’s eyes darken. “Oh, yeah. Noct forgot his bag and we doubled back for it. Nobody noticed us come in. This ugly punk was in the back of the class, saying something smartass about Noct to his buddies, and next thing I know, Prom’s in his face, pickin’ a fight over it.” Some of that hard anger relents into reluctant amusement as Gladio adds, “He’s a scrappy little thing. I almost didn’t wanna break it up.”

Ignis digests this information slowly.

Prompto’s bruises and torn clothes are still bright in the front of his mind, and he will always disapprove of the boy showing up in such a state, no matter what the reason may be.

But he can’t deny the gratitude he feels, that Prompto would so viciously defend their friend.

Or the pride.

“If he’s going to go around starting fights,” Ignis says, thinking both of bullies and the beaten up city block Prompto goes home to, “then we had better make sure he knows how to finish them.”

Gladio grins like a shark. “Leave it to me.”

 

* * *

 

It’s easy to catch Prompto in a lie, if only because the boy is so honest.

“You sure it’s cool if you stay over?” Noctis asks, already beaming at the idea of having his friend all to himself for the weekend. Prompto grins at him, on the same page.

“Sure, dude! I mean, my parents aren’t home anyway, so—”

“Oh?” Ignis says mildly, without looking up from the carrots on his cutting board. “I thought their work trip was over last week.”

There’s a collective silence that stretches for a moment too long, and then Prompto says, “It got extended another month.”

“You said they would be back in time,” Noctis says, something complicated in his voice. “You said—”

“I—That’s what they told me.” Prompto sounds quiet, ashamed. “Sorry.”

“Your birthday’s in _three days,_ Prom,” Noctis goes on, heated. “They won’t be back for your _birthday_?”

Ignis finally looks up at the boys—does his best to ignore the stark surprise on Prompto’s face, the wonder that his friend would even _remember_ his birthday—and says, “Do you have any plans that day?”

Prompto turns wide eyes up to him. “Um, I was gonna hang with Noct after school.”

Ignis nods, and turns back to his meal preparation, and starts planning a birthday dinner. Wonders aloud if the cake should be three layers or four, purely for the sake of watching Prompto’s eyes light up. Noctis beams at him over Prompto’s head, and Ignis spends the rest of the evening with company in the kitchen, the boys’ game discarded in favor of peeling potatoes in the sink.

Before he leaves, an awed Prompto says, “You’ll _really_ make me a birthday cake?”

And Ignis is no longer a stranger to the warm affection he feels for the boy who was once little more than a familiar face tagging along at Noctis’ side. But this protective edge to it—that’s new.

 

* * *

 

The prince storms home in a foul mood. Ignis says, “Your highness?”

“Prom’s a dumbass,” is all Noctis says before his bedroom door slams behind him.

Ignis coaxes the story out of him over dinner.

“These—assholes in our class, they had pictures of him from middle school,” Noctis mutters darkly, stabbing viciously at the pasta on his plate. “They were making fun of him, and other people were laughing, and I—I wanted to tear them apart.”

The crown prince can’t exactly be seen engaging in fistfights, Ignis thinks but doesn’t say. Noctis knows as much, glaring at the table with a frustrated wetness in his eyes.

“And Prom,” he says, “Prom just sat there. He didn’t say anything, and wouldn’t let me say anything. His face was all red and he looked like he wanted to cry, but he told me it didn’t matter.” Furious and aching, Noctis clenches his hands. “That _dumbass._ Of course it _matters.”_

 

* * *

 

The man who grabs Noctis by the shoulder is a harmless drunk, but that doesn’t stop the plainclothes guards from surging forward through the crowd, or the reflexive way Gladio and Ignis move up to nullify a potential threat to their charge—

All of them are seconds too slow, and Prompto gets there first. He’s barely as tall as the man’s shoulder but doesn’t hesitate to put Gladio’s training to use, sending the stranger stumbling back several steps.

His bright eyes are wide in his friendly, freckled face, hands up the way that was drilled into him after months of training with a member of the Crownsguard, fully ready to fight for the prince behind him.

It doesn’t come to that, the guards sweeping the man away seconds later, but the intention was there.

Noctis says, “Holy shit, Prom.”

Prompto laughs, hiding his shaking hands in his pockets. Ignis doesn’t miss them, or the way Prompto leans a little heavy into Noctis’ side once they’re in the car.

Gladio says, “What’d I tell you? Scrappy," and ruffles Prompto's floppy blond hair with no small amount of pride.

There's only one part of the prince's life that Prompto doesn't already occupy. Ignis looks at him—this shy, sweet-tempered boy who has never hesitated to throw himself between Noctis and anyone that might mean Noctis harm—and thinks he might have a place there, after all. 

 

* * *

 

“Oh,” Prompto says, at length. He’s standing barefoot in soft jeans and a rumpled T-shirt, leaning against his front door to keep it open, and looks like he has no idea what the protocol is for an unexpected visitor. “Um. Is it worth asking how you know where I live?”

Ignis raises an eyebrow and doesn’t respond. The building Prompto lives in should rightly be condemned, but his neighbors are a pleasant sort. A middle-aged woman with a child on each hip and laugh lines on her tired face kindly pointed him to Prompto’s door.

“Come in, I guess? Did you want to come in?”

The apartment is empty, but lived-in. Tidy and clean, with dishes drying by the sink, and colorful magnets on the fridge, and a plethora of photographs on every wall. A basket of laundry sits on the small dining table, a mop leans against the kitchen counter. His phone is on a charging dock by the window, playing music that is every bit as lively and cheerful as Prompto himself. 

There are no signs that anyone lives there with him. Ignis thinks about asking after his parents, just to prove a point, but it's been a long time since he's found himself capable of cruelty where Prompto is concerned.

“Uh, Iggy? Not that I'm not happy to see you, but what are you doing here?”

Ignis turns to face him. "I'm here to discuss the offer you received from the Crown." 

Prompto goes pale, his freckles the only color left in his face. "Um." 

"You were invited to become a member of the royal guard," Ignis goes on calmly. "You haven't given your answer yet."

"Yeah," Prompto whispers. 

"You're the only person his highness is willing to consider. Gladio has been training you off the record for the last three years, so I don't believe you'll have any trouble proving your place."

Prompto doesn't answer for a long moment, tugging anxiously at the cloth bracelet on his wrist. His eyes are blue moons beneath his untidy fringe. He says, "You think—I could do it?"

Ignis looks at him, and sees the lonely boy Noctis brought home for the first time five years ago. He keeps looking, and sees the young man they've all grown so fond of, who gives everything he has for the people he loves and asks nothing in return.

"I think we'd be lucky to have you," Ignis says, and is rewarded by the bright smile that edges its way carefully, hopefully, across Prompto's face. 

 


End file.
